Great Contemporaries

Mannerheim stepped down as Commander-in-Chief in January 1945 and as Regent-President in March 1946, aged 78. No actions were taken against him by the West for having been Hitler’s ally for three years. Winston Churchill, and every other objective observer, recognized that he was the savior of his country. He acted at a time when Finland was intolerably squeezed between the two most evil and violent totalitarian dictatorships in history.

“For Nemon,” Rosenthal said, “Winston Churchill symbolized greatness of character as a bulwark against inhumanity. This was the mainspring of Nemon’s message, as expressed in the numerous busts and statutes of Churchill now in many lands.”

"I have forfeited a great deal. I have given up an office that I loved, work in which I was deeply interested, and a staff of which any man might be proud. I have given up associations in that work with my colleagues with whom I have maintained for many years the most harmonious relations, not only as colleagues but as friends. I have given up the privilege of serving as lieutenant to a leader whom I still regard with the deepest admiration and affection. I have ruined, perhaps, my political career. But that is a little matter; I have retained something which is to me of great value—I can still walk about the world with my head erect." - Duff Cooper, 1938

Of all those appointed to his cabinet in May 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill had known Leo Amery the longest—back to when they were schoolboys. Despite the longevity of their relationship, they were never very close. Rather, as Robert Rhodes James wrote, “there was always a definite restraint, a lack of warmth, a noticeable caution and reserve” between them. Nevertheless, Amery played a notable part in ensuring Churchill’s premiership.

The editor of their correspondence reflects on his work, with insights into the supportive relationship between Churchill and his mother Jennie.

Churchill was a devotee of Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) the English poet, short-story writer and novelist, who in 1907 won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Kipling’s majestic novels of the old Empire struck a romantic chord in the young Winston. Later they studded his books and speeches.

Churchill’s friendship with H.G. Wells spanned forty years, and his enthusiasm for the writer’s work went back to “The Time Machine,” Wells’s first novel, published 1895.

Attlee’s verdict: “Winston Churchill was one of the greatest men that history records. He was brave, gifted, inexhaustible and indomitable….‘ Genius does what it must. Talent does what it can.’ Energy and poetry really sum him up.”

From an vanished age of "loyal opposition" came a remarkable tribute to Churchill from longtime Labour opponent and successor, Clement Attlee.

Among British generals, Slim ranks with Wellington. His courageous Indian, African and British troops earned Winston Churchill's highest accolades.

Encounters between glittering literati: “To do good is noble,” Twain told young Winston. “To teach others to do good is nobler, and no trouble.”

Jacky Fisher was not finished. He was restless, an agitator. His dismay over the conduct of the naval war brought him closer to Churchill, and soon the two were on favourable terms, locked in a curious destiny. The press baron George Riddell wrote: “Fisher, the Duchess, and Winston are now bosom friends.”